Joline
by Min Daae
Summary: After the fire, Felix holds what is more a vigil than anything, much as he refuses to admit it. Young!Felix. Rating for some implied grossness resulting from fire.


Felix's hands were red and raw and blistering where he'd pulled Joline out of the fire, but they hardly bothered him. _Joline _was what bothered him, Joline and how she didn't move or stir or anything.

He'd pulled her as far from the burning ruin of their home as he could, but it hadn't been far. The city had burned all night, but it didn't touch their hiding place - barely across the street. But when the traffic started early it wasn't long before someone aimed a kick his way. "Out of the _street, _gutter rat," they snapped, "And take your filth with you." He hissed to hear them call Joline filth, but moved back into the alleyway, the mud squishing under his feet. Joline had moaned softly, then, her eyelids fluttering, but she hadn't woken.

He'd spent the morning trying to find some fresh water, but only managed to wrangle a little dirty water dripping from a gutter, which he poured into her mouth. She choked and coughed most of it up.

Felix didn't know anything about caring for injuries, even less about burns. His hands looked all blistered and red, but Joline looked like that all over, and in some places her skin was cracked and bleeding. It made his stomach turn over, looking at her, but she was his friend.

He slept with his arms around her and felt how she was burning up and shivering at the same time. He tried to move her out of the alley, but she cried out so plaintively when he attempted to lift her that he gave up.

By the third day her blisters had begun to burst, and she whimpered ceaselessly, pleading for water, which he searched for desperately but could never find enough of. The one time he managed to get enough clean water for a proper drink, she drank it too fast and vomited it a few minutes later. Lying back panting, she rolled her swollen eyes over to look at him.

"Felix?"

He was next to her in a moment, crouching by her side. "I'm sorry, didn't mean to pour fast…"

"Just glad you're here," she said, and smiled a faint little smile at him before slipping back into unconsciousness.

The nights were too cold and the days were too warm. Joline shivered constantly, but her skin almost burned him when he touched it. His hands were peeling now, raw and sensitive, but Joline's burns weren't healing. They swelled and burst, leaking foul smelling fluid. The bleeding stopped, but everything else seemed to be getting worse. The fourth day he tried to stop some passersby for help, but they brushed him aside without even waiting to hear what he asked for, if he was lucky. A couple pressed coins into his hand, but he was afraid to go far enough to buy help without Joline, and she couldn't move.

Felix didn't think she was quite aware of where she was, now. She woke up screaming sometimes, about the water and how he was going to drown her, and he tried to tell her that it was okay, that their Keeper was dead now, but she pushed him off, eyes rolling in terror.

By the sixth day her eyes wouldn't open and she had stopped whimpering, though every so often a moan escaped her. Felix tried pressing mud to her forehead or her burns, hoping that the coolness would do something, but while her burns were now peeling there was only more blisters and raw skin underneath. Once, as he pressed mud to her cheeks in desperation, she woke fully, grabbed his arm.

"Don't let me die!" She rasped.

"You ain't gonna die," he told her, earnestly, though he could feel his eyes filling up. Felix knew death when he saw it, and the heat baking off Joline wasn't the kind she would survive. "You ain't gonna die, get better and we're free," but then she coughed and vomited sour bile all over his arms and fainted again.

"Joline," he said, feeling the tears spill over and a reluctant sob clawing out of his throat. "Joline, wake up, if I could just move you- Kethe, please, _please…_"

The seventh day he could barely hear her breathing and couldn't find her heartbeat. She didn't stir. The ruins across the street had stopped smoking in the light drizzle coming down. He hoped the wet and water would cool Joline, revive her, but nothing seemed to touch her anymore.

The alleyway smelled like death.

As nightfall came, two big, burly men stepped into the alley where he held Joline on his lap, curled up in a nervous, skinny little heap.

"Come on, then," they said, one baring his teeth in what Felix supposed was meant as a smile, and he realized they'd come for Joline.

He tried to press back into the wall. "No! _No! _You can't have her!"

They took her body from him as easily as a sack, threw her roughly in a barrow. One of them held him around the chest to keep him from dragging her back even as he fought tooth and claw. "Let me go! Let me _go!" _

"Give it up, boy," the bigger of them snarled. "She's dead, she's been dead for days by the smell of it-"

At this, Felix howled, nails flashing up to dig into the man's face, who yelled and let go. He flung himself over Joline's body protectively, hissing like a cat. They shoved him off with ease, down into the mud. "Stay back, boy, or we'll bash your head in," one snapped. He struggled to rise as they began to take Joline away.

"She's not dead!" He yelled, after them, hands balling into fists, tears stinging his eyes and fury making his heart pound. "_She's not dead, you bastards! _Bring her back, SHE'S NOT DEAD!"

They didn't come back, and he was too frightened to follow. He slunk back into the alleyway instead, and slept alone, curled in a cold little heap, clothes half burnt, half matted with Joline's blood and pus and vomit.

Before he fell properly asleep, he cried, fists pressed into his eyes and face against his knees, though he felt like howling.

Felix flung the coins away from himself. They hadn't saved Joline. They couldn't be any good.

He curled up more tightly and whimpered into his knees until exhaustion dragged him under.


End file.
